# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 12 19_S70
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

70

hounds the signal to rush upon the alleged stag. The peasant is torn to pieces. But God’s judgment did not sleep. On the next day the bishop went hunting again, fell from his horse, and at once breathed out his wicked soul in a stream of blood.

The godless papist Staphylus, to whom Flacius put this story, did not dare to deny it, since it was known to town and country; he declared only that it was not fitting for a private man like Flacius to judge the actions of a princely bishop. (Wolf. Lect. memor. II., 919. 20.)

Despair of a Persecutor.

The renowned Lutheran theologian Alexander Alesse (Alesius), a native of Edinburgh in Scotland (died 1565), writes of a counselor of the King of Scotland, from the time of the Reformation, Thomas Blauer, that he had been the author of the persecutions of the Lutherans in Scotland, but at last, when his death drew near, fell into despair. He cried, writes Alesse, without ceasing: “I am damned, I am lost!” When monks thereupon appeared at his bed to comfort him, he called out to them: “Away with your antics, for I could never persuade myself to believe that there is a God or a devil, a hell or a heaven; your doctrine and the evangelical I have always esteemed alike, and in all my counsels I have looked only to gold. Therefore I took up the cause of the bishops and prevailed upon the king to drive out your adversaries. Neither your masses nor your vigils can help me anything. I am already damned, and Satan already holds me by his cord, to cast me into the abyss of hell and to torment me there forever and ever according to my deserts.” In this misery the wretched man then went hence, comfortless, with woe and lamentation. — O would that all would consider this, who for the sake of shameful gain contradict the truth and hate and persecute its confessors! Hell surely awaits them, and the foretaste of it often already here, when death, that dreadful messenger of God, draws near them. (Cf. J. Wolfii lection. II. f. 293.)

A Question of the Inquisition.

Among the 38 questions which the inquisitors in Germany, according to the instruction they had received, had to put to those who were brought under examination, was also this one: “Whether he believes that ordination in the church is a sacrament, so that he who has not been ordained after the manner of the Catholic Church cannot validly administer the ecclesiastical sacraments in the church, nor salutarily administer other ecclesiastical offices?” (J. Wolf. lect. mem. II, 621.)

How the Popes Keep Faith and Troth.

Pope Paul III once invited Malatesta Balionus of Perugia to come to him, with the sworn promise of safe conduct. The invited man, relying on the pope’s oath, appears. But the pope has him put to death at once, with the excuse: “He had indeed sworn the man safe conduct on the journey to Rome, but not on the journey home!” (This Paul III is the same pope who first confirmed the order of the Jesuits, assembled the Council of Trent, and said on his deathbed: “He would count himself happy if he had not begotten children;” which latter wish, however, had its ground not in his repenting of his harlot’s life, but in the fact that his children caused him so much trouble!)

What Keeps Many in the Papacy.

When Pope Julius III wished to make a certain Bishop Petrus Betanus a cardinal, some cardinals objected, urging especially that this bishop was infected with the Lutheran heresy. Julius answered: “If it is so, it is just right; or would it not be more advisable to cleanse him of this stain by the placing of a cardinal’s hat upon him, and to chain him to us with such bonds and keep him with us, than to allow him to flee from us and join our enemies, whom we have in Germany, as Vergerius did?” — How many good heads with bad hearts, who see well enough the deceit of the papacy, may in this way be kept in the papacy! We Lutherans, to be sure, lose nothing thereby.

How liberal that pope, moreover, was in bestowing the dignity of cardinal is shown by the fact that he once, to the great vexation of the other cardinals, conferred this dignity upon his monkey-keeper.

“Welt-Bote.”

We have just received the first number of a new political periodical under the above name. The editor is a Mr. B. F. Trexler. The place of publication is Allentown in Pennsylvania. The paper, one large closely printed sheet, is to appear once every week, at the low price of One Dollar in advance, and, besides entertaining matter, to give a weekly report of all the events and conditions of the home country and abroad. Concerning the tendency to be followed in the publication of this paper the editor expresses himself as follows: “The Weltbote will not throw itself into the arms of any of the various political parties, and also will not especially emphasize or neglect any religious denomination before others; but will seek to sail straight through, free from prejudice, in politics as in religion, in order to bring out and promote everywhere what is true and good, without fear or favor, to the best of its knowledge and ability, and to be able to combat what is false and bad.” The paper is to meet the need of a news-sheet “edited according to generally Christian principles and working against unbelief.”

Although, with this declared plan, many wishes still press themselves upon us, we nevertheless also welcome this undertaking with hearty joy, and wish the honorable editor the best success of his work.

In order at the same time to let our readers enjoy something of the paper, two extracts may also stand here, which are given by the “Weltbote” from two German unbelieving papers of vice and blasphemy, to characterize them and as proof how necessary the publication of political papers also for Christians is. No. 1 is from the “Missouri-Zeitung” of this place; No. 2 from the “Newarker Zeitung.”

1) “The first and chief thing by which we distinguish ourselves from religious people is that in the belief in a “God” and in what is connected with it we recognize the cancer which for thousands of years has gnawed at mankind and kept it from its destiny. The individual cannot live humanly, in no family can true happiness bloom, the whole of mankind is running on wrong paths to its grave; so long as the hideous bugbears, God, the hereafter, eternal retribution, eke out their ghost-existence. Therefore it is the task of every true revolutionary to direct his best strength to the destruction of this wretched trio of nothings. Every revolution will be made only by halves if the vital nerve of the primeval monarch above the stars is not cut off; every revolution will be made in vain if the ministers of this monarch are not rooted out, as one roots out destructive vermin.” —

2) “Self-preservation is the first and most predominant impulse, as of every living creature, so also of man. As soon as his circumstances assume the shape described above (namely, that unemployment and high prices of the necessaries of life set in), this impulse of self-preservation also asserts its right, and there awakens the quite natural urge to lay hold and to take what is required for life, above all food and drink, wherever it is to be found. Law, custom, morality, religion, and whatever all these strait-jackets of civil society may be called, have indeed greatly restrained the impulse of self-preservation, especially in the form of its appearance as laying hold; but in great and general distress nature bursts all artificial fetters and bonds which bind civil society, and nature asserts her rights.”

Church News.

To the one little congregation which formed ten years ago in the west of St. Louis County, Mo., in Central Township, 3 others in the vicinity had since been added, all of which have hitherto been served by Pastor Müller. The work was too great for one man, especially as school had to be kept at two places. The congregation on Manchester Road, the strongest